Marisacat

Pushing … 7 January 2011

Orphaned bats being kept warm in dusters. Trish Wimberley and her colleagues at the Australian Bat Clinic and Wildlife Trauma Centre have helped save 130 orphaned bats on the Gold Coast after the recent floods in Australia. They saved 350 young bats during the 2008 storm season but this year think there’s more going on than just wild weather. Carers have visited several bat ‘camps’ on the coast in recent weeks to find four-week-old babies on the ground covered in maggots and fly eggs. Trish said: “They’re coming down to feed on the ground. That makes them vulnerable. It’s not a natural occurrence and shows there is trouble in the environment. “Bats are a barometer to what is going on in the environment. They’re our canaries down the coal mine.” The surviving youngsters will be bottle fed and kept either hanging on clothes lines or in special intensive care units until they are ready to fly again in about four weeks

Great. The ex just came to get the boys and he has almost completely lost his voice (nevermind that he reeked to high heaven of cigs — he smokes in his apt. — the boys come back always stinking of cigs). He tells kid the elder that his friend can’t come spend the night because he “doesn’t want to get him sick”. I say, “um, are you actually sick? You told me you were just congested. If you’re contagious, won’t the children get sick too?” (Thinking to myself, especially since they’ll be trapped inside of your stinking apartment all weekend because you never do anything with them, even when you’re well?!)

Oh, I don’t think they’ll get it, he says.

Of course it doesn’t matter to him because I am the one who has to stay home with them when they’re sick. Because, you know HE works. Yes, implied there is that I do not.

Goddes. It is the same damned thing as before we were separated (except for now he doesn’t have to deal with anything at all kid-wise except on his own terms). I should have just sucked it the fuck up for the next 10 years…

OPh, and I was just denied food stamps and reduced lunches for the kids because I make “too much” — it’s BS on a big scale. I think that the woman added the $ I make ONTO my unemployment instead of realizing that they subtract what I make from my benefits.

I think I’ll just go lay down on the RR tracks now and save everyone the trouble. After I’ve smoked some cigs and had a few beers, of course.

“Israel’s Supreme Court gave the green light on Thursday for the continued operation of gender-segregated “modesty buses” serving ultra-Orthodox Jews.”

If this was in a Muslim country, the New York Times would have placed it prominently on its front page, side-by-side with the Israeli scientific study of tears: which revealed that tears are tied to emotions.

In the next issue of Science, an Israeli team of researchers will reveal that humans sleep. (thanks Sarah)

But let’s put literary analysis aside. How about this: don’t fuck with works of art. Don’t cover the tits or dicks on statues. Don’t put out DVDs with the naughty bits cut out of a film. If you can’t handle it or are offended by it, move on. The Rude Pundit can’t abide intense violence against women in movies, so there’s a few allegedly great flicks he’s missed. But he wouldn’t ask to see Irreversible with the notorious rape scene cut out.

You can’t take the word “nigger”? Then, sorry, you don’t get to enjoy the rest of Twain’s satire of human degradation and idiocy (and you should probably avoid Pudd’nhead Wilson, too). You don’t get to watch Pulp Fiction. You don’t get to watch unedited episodes of The Jeffersons and Sanford and Son. You don’t get to hear Archie Bunker explain about how he got his ass kicked when he was a kid by a black boy because he used the word: “That’s what all them people was called in them days. I mean everybody we knew called them people ‘niggers.’ That’s all my old man ever called them, there.” No, we’re just not that mature anymore. (Yeah, yeah, you can say we’ve gotten more “sensitive” or some such shit. All that’s happened is that we’ve made the word more powerful by its false invisibility.)

This is ain’t about people in places of business or public officials using “nigger.” It’s about art. Art pisses people off. You think it’s ludicrous when dumbass members of Congress get offended by ants crawling on a cross in a video by a gay artist at the Smithsonian? Well, welcome to the other side of the coin.

This is ain’t about people in places of business or public officials using “nigger.” It’s about art. Art pisses people off.

I wandered last night into the post John Caruso put up on this, normally I like him (tho he thinks the SF Board of Supes is a lot more liberal than I think they are) and what do I find in the thread, but DC chastising ms_xeno for whatever. A stridency that offended David.

She made many many many good points.

I really wonder at people. Are we all, including Twain in retrograde, to be milquetoast ?

I wandered into it not knowing it was controversial, not knowing more than the story line I read at Netflix, I was getting films from netflix that had Vincent Cassel in them, he plays the boyfriend fo the woman.

He is also in a film made in one of the housing projects that ring Paris, a story of three young fellows growing up there, a Jew, a Muslim and a North African. Just excellent…

Few things interest me less at this point than royal court personnel changes. I actually agree with the pro-Obama/Democratic-Party-loyal commentators who insist it doesn’t much matter who becomes White House Chief of Staff because it’s Obama who drives administration policy. Obama didn’t do what he did in the first two years because Rahm Emanuel was his Chief of Staff. That view has the causation reversed: he chose Emanuel for that position because that’s who Obama is. Similarly, installing JP Morgan’s Midwest Chairman, a Boeing director, and a long-time corporatist — Bill Daley — as a powerful underling replacing Emanuel isn’t going to substantively change anything Obama does. It’s just another reflection of the Obama presidency, its priorities and concerns, and its overarching allegiances.

There’s a section of my forthcoming book about the rule of law which examines the direct causal line between the vast number of Wall Street officials in key administration positions and the full-scale exemption from accountability which financial elites enjoy even for the most egregious lawbreaking. When you compile all of those appointments in one place, the absolute stranglehold large-scale corporate interests exert over virtually all realms of government policy is quite striking. But it’s nothing more than what the economist Nouriel Roubini meant when he told the makers of the 2010 documentary “Inside Job” that Wall Street has “captured the political system” on “the Democratic and the Republican side” alike, or what Simon Johnson describes as “The Quiet Coup”: “The government seems helpless, or unwilling, to act against” elite business interests.

Jesus, even David Brooks, who is an idiot, closed off a column some years ago now, saying Goldman Sachs people are so heavily salted thru government that the only reality to perceive is that they run the government.

U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona was shot outside a grocery store in Tucson while holding a public event, Arizona Public Media reported Saturday.

The Democrat, who was re-elected to her third term in November, was hosting a “Congress on Your Corner” event at the Safeway in northwest Tucson when a gunman ran up and started shooting, according to Peter Michaels, news director of Arizona Public Media.

At least five other people, including members of her staff, were hurt. Giffords was transported to University Medical Center in Tucson. Her condition was not immediately known.

Giffords was talking to a couple when the suspect ran up firing indiscriminately and then ran off, Michaels said. According to other witnesses, he was tackled by a bystander and taken into custody.

Giffords was first elected to represent Arizona’s 8th District in 2006. The “Congress on Your Corner” events allow constituents to present their concerns directly to her.

A guy being interviewed on CNN says that there are bodies on the ground, 15 to 20 shots were fired, and that he heard from others there that the Congresswoman was shot in the head at point-blank range. He said he did see her still moving on the stretcher to the Lifeflight helicopter.

it sounds really bad, and very deliberate, from the report the guy in a Sprint store is giving on CNN. He said the shots were all one after the other, and he’s hearing now from cops that 6 to 9 people may be dead. He can see what he thinks is three bodies.

I just finished the Avec Eric I’d recorded early this morning and switched on the news to these reports. Thanks again for telling me about his show … it was the one where the Sous Chef at La Bernadin takes the viewer through each station of the kitchen, to show how you learn and work your way up. It was really interesting.

From the very start, Boehner’s career has been a heartwarming tribute to the gentle spirituality and tender human connections that surround the experience of congressional service. Here’s how he got into the House in the first place: His predecessor, a white Republican named Donald “Buz” Lukens, got caught on camera talking with a black woman at a McDonald’s in Columbus, Ohio, about how he had slept with her teenage daughter. It came out later that Lukens, his negotiating skills honed by years of public service, had paid 40 bucks to the girl to have sex with him in his Columbus apartment.

Convicted of “contributing to the unruliness of a minor,” old Buz refused to resign his seat, and so John Boehner, a young plastics salesman (plastics!), took him on in the primary and won on a platform of restoring morals and ethics to the Congress. Boehner then joined up with a group of other freshmen congressmen, including God-humping Pennsylvanian Rick Santorum, and formed the so-called Gang of Seven. The group made names for themselves by giving sanctimonious speeches blasting Democratic congressional leaders for things like getting free haircuts at the House barbershop and free meals at the Senate restaurant. Shortly thereafter, Boehner ascended to a leadership role himself after helping co-author the “Contract With America,” and it wasn’t long before the man who swept into office in the shiny red underpants of an ethical crusader was creating his own peculiar ethics record.

Forget about free haircuts: Boehner was soon caught literally handing out checks from the tobacco lobby on the floor of the House. This was 1995; the House was voting to consider an end to federal subsidies of the tobacco industry, and Boehner, at the time the fourth-ranking Republican in the party hierarchy, went on the floor and handed out, by his own admission, “a half-dozen” donation checks from the tobacco lobby to various members.

Boehner only got busted when former-football-star-turned-GOP-congressman Steve Largent got wind of the check-passing and confronted Boehner about it. The fallout from the incident reveals the future House speaker at his absolute finest: While being interviewed by a television reporter about what he had done, Boehner with a straight face tries to turn the tables and present himself as an opponent of the practice.

Well, The neurosurgical chief out there is respected. A young guy, Lemole went to Penn trained fellowship at Doppler in Austria. His pop is a heart surgeon who used to practice in Delaware…not a typical silver spooner FWIW.
::
She’s the Rep who married the asotronaut .
She had a big job at one of the accounting firms before doin the political thing…

Giffords was first sworn in as a congresswoman on January 3, 2007. She is the third woman in Arizona’s history to be elected to serve in the U.S. Congress. In her inaugural speech on the floor of the House of Representatives, Giffords said a comprehensive immigration reform package needs to include modern technology to secure the border, more border patrol agents, tough employer sanctions for businesses that knowingly hire illegal immigrants, and a guest-worker program. In her first month in office, Congresswoman Giffords voted to support increased federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research, raising the minimum wage, endorsing the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, and supporting new rules for the House of Representatives targeting ethical issues. Giffords also voted to repeal subsidies to big oil companies and invest the savings in renewable energy. “We put our national security at risk by relying on oil from unstable regimes in the Middle East and Latin America,” Giffords told her colleagues in a speech on the House floor during debate on the Clean Energy Act. The act repeals $14 billion in subsidies given to oil companies and establishes a Strategic Renewable Energy Reserve to increase research in clean renewable energy, to develop greater energy efficiency, and to improve energy conservation.

During the 2007 session of Congress, Giffords introduced a bill (H.R. 1441)[1] that forbids the sale of F-14 aircraft parts on the open market.[2] She also voted for the contentious May 2007 Iraq Emergency Supplemental Spending bill, saying, “I cannot, in good conscience, allow the military to run out of money while American servicemen and women are being attacked every day”.[3]

Giffords is a member of the Blue Dog Coalition and the New Democrat Coalition. She is the only member of the U.S. Congress whose spouse, astronaut Mark E. Kelly, is an active duty member of the U.S. military.[4] She is also known as a strong proponent of solar energy as well as for her work to secure the border with Mexico.[5][6]

some CNN hack is suggesting that people shouldn’t jump to conclusions, that the shooter could be someone on the “far left” who shot her for not being liberal enough, and insists that this is as likely as a winger shooting her for being “too liberal” (which is funny on any issue besides women’s health care) or maybe just a “celebrity stalker”.

that is why I thought maybe I could manage salmon, either pan saute or oven roast. WIll check ou thte recipe… thanks!

If I can manage to swing by the market on the way home from the hospital on Monday will look at their fresh salmon… I very gingerly ordered the ground sirloin from Safeway a couple of years ago, and was shocked at it being more than acceptable, in fact I cook it very very very rare.

Good Lord.
Fox –
and lemme get the disclaimer out of the way –
I only watch them for shit like this –
is now spinning Shooter as a Commie Nazi
Anti Federal Reserve Paulite goldbug.
Talk about hedging your bets.

Sotto voce tho on reports that he’s a newly signed up recruit, a white male anti immigrant Mil whack.

So.

At Thursday's debate, Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren defended their Medicare for All plan. They faced criticism from several rivals, including Senator Amy Klobuchar, who described it as a "bad idea," and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who claimed the bill shows Sanders and Warren do not "trust the American people."

At the third presidential primary debate in Houston, Texas, senator and 2020 candidate Elizabeth Warren called for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Warren also spoke about her stance on U.S. trade policy and how "our trade policy in America has been broken for decades."

After being questioned about the crisis in Venezuela, Senator Bernie Sanders defended his vision of democratic socialism. "I agree with what goes on in Canada and in Scandinavia: guaranteeing healthcare to all people as a human right. I believe that the United States should not be the only major country on Earth not to provide paid family and medical le […]

Debate moderator Jorge Ramos of Univision grilled former Vice President Joe Biden over the Obama administration's deportation record. Biden refused to answer whether he did anything to prevent Obama from deporting a record 3 million people.

A U.S. House of Representatives panel on Friday demanded internal emails, detailed financial information and other company records from top executives of Amazon.com Inc., Facebook Inc, Apple Inc, and Alphabet Inc's Google, widening the antitrust probe of Big Tech.

U.S. Senator and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris on Friday asked a government watchdog to look into the Trump administration's decision to launch an antitrust probe into four automakers cooperating with California on tighter greenhouse gas emissions limits that Trump is trying to eliminate.

A lawyer for former FBI official Andrew McCabe pressed U.S. prosecutors on Friday to drop their politically sensitive case against him, citing reports that suggest they may be having trouble securing criminal charges.

Media

from Howl

I'm with you in Rockland
where we wake up electrified out of the coma
by our own souls' airplanes roaring over the
roof they've come to drop angelic bombs the
hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls collapse
O skinny legions run outside O starry
spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is
here O victory forget your underwear we're free
I'm with you in Rockland
in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-
journey on the highway across America in tears
to the door of my cottage in the Western night

October 7 1955

"a remarkable collection of angelson one stage reading their poetry"
"I think Allen Ginsberg standing up there reading - putting himself on the line - was one of the two bravest things I've ever seen. Remember, it was '55. People had crew cuts, and they looked at you like you were misplaced cannon fodder. The country was being run by Luce publications. It was a dangerous, cold, ugly time, and it was scary. . .
In all our memories no one had been so outspoken in poetry before. We had gone beyond a point of no return. None of us wanted to go back to the grey, chill, militaristic silence, to the intellectual void - to the land without poetry - to the spiritual drabness. We wanted to make it new and we wanted to invent it and the process of it as we went into it. We wanted voice and we wanted vision."
-Michael McClure

Democrats…

Same as goddam fucking forever.
Over and over, in election year after election year, GE and MidTerms both… the Dems start to purr and preen, they stretch luxuriously - at just being TOLD they are going to win [...]
It never fails.
... in February of 2002, looking over the already joyless congressional stragglers willing to be drafted for duty… they barely dreamed, yet, it was even possible (Howard, a different person then, had not arrived to say it could be done)… but one thing was clear, we could not rely on the party to swing it. Could not. You could smell it, they would screw the deal. And I am not talking about Howard and primary issues here. By the end, that was a passing political story. Chuck it on the heap.
[...]
Upshot? The Republicans make it thru. They hold on.